Gérin, ordered arrested by general Leblanc, stands with his grenadiers at Anse-à-Veau and is found dead beside his pistols.

It was the 18th of January. Leblanc moves onto the parade ground with the rest of the 16th regiment. He has them form line of battle before the door of the church, almost opposite the house of Senator Daguilh, into whose enclosure Gérin, having abandoned his own house, which adjoined it, had just entered with his grenadiers, thinking he could defend himself better there.

Leblanc dreaded the imminence of a clash: he sent anew, and in vain, to beseech Gérin, in the name of his own glory, to have the arms laid down and to trust in the loyalty of the President of Haïti, whose good will he guaranteed to him.

Gérin, deaf to these considerations, appeared at eleven o’clock in the morning at the gate of the enclosure in which he had shut himself: in the full dress of a general officer, the national plume floating on his hat, he saluted the church and the colors of the 16th regiment, whose drums were beating the salute. His martial bearing inspired respect at that solemn moment. Had he not been the colonel of that regiment when it was the 3rd demi-brigade of the South, during the War of Independence? Was it not he who had given it its fine organization and led it more than once to victory? And quite recently still, on 17 October 1806, was it not he who had led that valiant corps to the destruction of the brutal regime of the Emperor Dessalines? A few seconds had passed in the general anxiety, when Gérin, remarking the religious impression that he seemed to produce on the soldiers, began to harangue them: “Will you dare,” he said to them, “to turn your arms against me?…”

Leblanc, then setting aside all considerations and half-measures, springs onto his horse and orders Colonel Fabre, commander of the place, to make himself master of the enclosure occupied by Gérin and his honor guard.

Fabre, in obeying the orders of his general, was received by a general discharge. Sergeant Laforest fell mortally wounded at his side. When the smoke had cleared, there was seen on the ground the lifeless body of Gérin, and beside him his discharged pistols. It was thought at once that he had, with his own hands and with one of the pistols, blown out the brains of Laforest, and that he had then turned the other against himself. One of his aides-de-camp, Commander Lhérisson, arrested in the neighborhood of Baradaires, was executed a few days afterward, as an accomplice in the general’s machinations (1).